Postwar Legal Transplants and Growth of the Academic Discipline: 1945–1990

Abstract

Abstract America again re-engaged in foreign legal reform after 1945 in Germany, Japan, and Korea, dependent upon the social, political, economic, and military situation. During the 1950s, the communist Cold War ideological threat to capitalism and liberal democracy pushed the United States to demonstrate its ability to foster economic and social progress among its allies and non-aligned nations. Comparatists in the ABA and the newly formed American Association for the Comparative Study of Law devoted substantial effort to international unification of commercial and trade law and later law projects to promote modernization among developing countries, such as agrarian reform, judicial independence, and active instruction in legal education. By the 1970s, unsatisfactory results for most of these action programs shifted concern to scholarly inquiry about the relationship between law and social change. Furthermore, comparative lawyers began to take a greater interest in the amorphous concepts of rule of law and human rights. The postwar period marked a steady rise in comparative law academic quality, stimulated by the AACSL, its meetings, journal, and participation in international congresses. Comparatists developed expertise in subfields, namely, unification of law, private international law, and comparative legal sociology. Law schools saw more comparative law courses and coursebooks; some specialized in Soviet, Japanese, or Latin American law, or in fields such as comparative constitutional law or European Community law. Comparative law journals proliferated, as did degree programs for foreign students. By 1990, the AACSL had instituted a democratic system of election, which put it on a path toward further growth.